National Institutes of Health

I am not even lying... this is where I work!!!!

This is the National Institutes of Health where I work. It is a government "hospital" focused on research. Many of the protocols and best practices for common diseases were set here in this very place. All of the patients here are research subjects and are getting some of the newest treatments and procedures available in the US. I mean, a lot of the medicines that I use were probably first tested here. How cool is that? Anyways, the patients get to come here for free and all of their care is free. They could order five dinner trays, and all of those would be free.
Since it is a government facitility, the security has been very strict. It is a little bit overwhelming, actually.
For the first four days, I did not have an official ID badge, so I had to come through the visitor's entrance. At the visitor's entrance you have to stop your car in this big long line, turn it off, pop the trunk and get out and walk through a metal detector. You also have to put all of your bags through an X-ray machine. One day there was a police dog sniffing all of the cars! It is pretty crazy. The hospital sits on a huge lot (4 million square feet) with around 60 buildings. One is the National Institute of Envirnomental Health Sciences (hmmm.. future career)? There are like 18,000 employees and about 1400 research studies going on at any one time. Most are studies about the natural history of rare diseases or clinical trials.
I will be working in the inpatient hospital on the infectious disease/cardiac telemetry floor. There are also tons of clinics for patient visits on site and a day hospital for the patients that do not need to stay overnight. This is not like a regular hospital. There is no ER. All admissions are somehwat planned. It's very interesting.
The hospital is centered around the idea of from the bench to the bedside and back. The research labs are connected right to the inpatient floors. This hospital is really creating the medicine of the future, and I am so excited to be working there! This hospital is a division of the Health and Human Services, and Congress allots it a $28billion annual budget. And that my friends is why there is a vital signs machine in every patient room! No more running around trying to find who is using it when you need it!
I am just very excited to be here. We watched a movie in orientation that pointed out that to the patients that come here, this place is really their last hope. For most, they are about at the end of their road. Regular medicine in hospitals in their hometowns can no longer help them and so they come to the NIH. Some come here knowing that they will not get better but that others will benefit from their research. It all sounds very somber, but I am also proud that I am going to get to be there for those patients when it means the most to them. I know the importance of hope when you are facing a chronic illness, and I am excited to be a part of this. And of course, I hope that they find the answers and help that they need. I am so excited to be part of something like this!
This is definitely not going to be like any other kind of place that I have worked! I am hoping to get the "science" that I have been missing in my last jobs. Did I say that I was excited?